lost_boy | (no subject)

"Hi," I said as I set my bag down at the table, sliding onto the bench. Glancing around, I tried to catch sight of everyone who was at the table, wondering if Achilles had actually come to class today. I tried to convince him he ought to go sometimes, because I thought it was useful, learning new things, but I also understood why he didn't like coming.

We were different, the both of us. This wasn't my world and I didn't think it was his either.

Still, I felt as if I were getting better at it. I felt very normal as I settled onto the bench and began to open my lunch bag and see what had been packed today. The workers at the Home tried to make all our lunches most days and I felt very strange about that, when it was a task I could easily do myself, but this morning I had been shooed out of the kitchen when I tried. I had a sandwich -- chicken and lettuce, it looked like -- and carrots and a small tin of chocolate pudding. An apple for later. Not nearly enough. I was already starving.

"Holy shit, remind me never to do that again," Eddie said, putting a cup of soft-serve down in front of Jamie without further comment. It was chocolate-vanilla swirl, while his own was just vanilla. They were both slightly melted, and just the crappy lunchroom ice cream that always tasted kind of chalky, but he'd braved the lunch line for it, so he was more than a little proud of himself.

He didn't quite meet Jamie's eyes, only cutting him a small, sideways smile. Jamie, of course, didn't asked for the extra treat, but the moment Eddie saw him giving his own lunch such a forlorn look, he decided to brave the line with the bullies and popular kids waiting to buy pizza and french fries.

I looked from the ice cream to Eddie and then back again, not quite understanding at first. Then I realized he'd gone and gotten it for me without me having even asked and I shoved my sandwich aside, lighting up in a smile. Just like the day I'd found that stupid red coat, Eddie was reminding me all over again why I liked him so much. It made me want to get him something, too, but I had no idea where to even begin.

I would have to think.

"I'll go with you next time," I said, picking up my spoon with one hand and reaching out under the table with the other. My fingers found Eddie's knee and settled there, his skin warm on my hand even through his trousers. I wasn't trying to hide anything, but despite all the kissing we were doing, I was still shy in public sometimes.

"Yeah, then we'll both be suffering," Eddie groused, even as he shifted closer until they were pressed shoulder to shoulder. Just like he always did, Eddie tensed under that the weight of Jamie's hand, not because he didn't like it, or even because it made him nervous to be doing that stuff in the cafeteria where any asshole could see, but because it always startled him how much he liked it. It was just a hand on his knee. Through clothes, even. It shouldn't have felt so good or so scandalous.

Picking up his spoon, Eddie busied himself with his ice cream, his other hand drifting under the table to cover Jamie's. It was still all jittery fingers and sweating palms, but Jamie didn't seem to mind.

It sucks that all of RIchie's friends are older than him and in high school now. He's the new kid at Darrow Middle School, and so many of the guys in his class just look at him funny when he dives into one of his Voices. So today, after jumping the fence at the middle school and heading over to catch lunch with his friends, Richie had charmed his way to a slice of pizza from the lunch lady. All in all, a pretty decent day, so long as he didn't get caught and kicked out of Darrow High again.

"Why don't you two just touch dicks already and get it over with," Richie says, sitting across the table from Eds and Jamie at the lunch table with his pizza. He's only been in Darrow a few weeks, but a few things had been pretty obvious to Richie right away. First, Darrow was fucking weird. Second, the lady in charge at the Children's Home pretty much hated him.

Third, Jamie was way more than a friend to old Eddie Spaghetti. At least, judging by the way they were always making goo-goo eyes at each other when they thought nobody was looking.

Edited 2018-10-06 03:10 (UTC)

Even though I knew Richie was there, I was still startled, dropping my spoon in my rapidly melting ice cream, little bits of it splattering on the front of my t-shirt. I didn't jerk my hand back, though, which was good, because Eddie's hand was on top of mine now and I liked how that felt. My fingers tightened just a little in my surprise, only briefly, then relaxed again and I peered at Richie curiously from across the table.

"Why would we do that?" I asked.

I knew what he meant by dick, even if no one would have called it that back home, preferring other slang terms they thought a little kid never listened to, but I'd spent too much time out on the streets of London not to hear. But I didn't know enough about sex to know if that was really a thing people did.

"Shut the fuck up, Richie," Eddie squawked, his eyes threatening to bug out of his skull. And then Jamie spoke up, and Eddie didn't know which part of the conversation to freak out over more.

"Don't listen to him, he's just being stupid," Eddie hissed, his hand tightening convulsively around Jamie's before pulling away.

Now that the idea had been implanted, it was there and he was imagining it, his face getting redder by the second.

"It's true," Richie says, taking a big bite of pepperoni pizza and talking with his mouth full, "That's what you're supposed to do when it's two guys. No, wait. I think maybe one dick goes into the other dick?"

Richie'd overheard someone in one of his classes say something about it, and had filed the information away for later. Up until now, it hadn't been something he'd thought about much; he hadn't had much reason to.

I was embarrassed by the words, but only because it was directed at me and Eddie so specifically. Richie wasn't speaking of some anonymous people touching dicks, he was talking about me and Eddie and I liked Eddie very much and I liked kissing him very much and I liked doing other things very much, too, but there was still lots I didn't know anything about. So I was embarrassed, but curious, too.

I looked shocked at Richie's next statement, though, too surprised to be very embarrassed any longer.

"No, it doesn't," I hissed, not because I knew any better, but because that didn't even seem possible. "Does it? No. That's not true." Maybe it was. Maybe I had to ask Magnus more questions than I realized.

"Oh my God, that's not even physically possible," Eddie said in a breathless, haughty rush, nearly flinging his spoon as he gestured in Richie's direction. "Nobody's sticking any dicks into dicks, Richie! How would that even fit?"

His face was starting to grow alarmingly red, but only because he couldn't get those pictures out of his head-- the ones he'd seen on the internet a few weeks back. Some of them were gifs.

"We're not even doing any of that yet, okay? Just shut up," Eddie demanded, and then, because he couldn't seem to stop himself, and because it felt important to prove that he knew more than Richie did, he blurted, "Most people just use their hands and mouths, anyway!"

"Look, I'm just telling you what I heard!" Richie replies, though in the moment, he cant even remember now who said it. Maybe it had been in Darrow, or maybe back in Derry. Either way, Richie had taken it as fact without really thinking about it that much, "I don't care whose dick goes into whose."

He'd thought a few times that it might be weird if it happened next to him at the Children's Home, but somehow he figured both Eddie and Jamie would probably find somewhere else for that.

I was quiet, partly listening to Eddie and Richie as they went back and forth, partly trying to work out what I believed to be more possible, and finally settling on trusting Eddie over Richie on this matter. As far as I knew, Richie hadn't kissed any boys and probably didn't really know the details about sex, and I thought Eddie might have tried to do some research, like I had.

I was still going to ask Magnus, though.

I was about to announce I thought Eddie was probably right, when his other words sunk in. The ones about mouths and hands, and my face flushed so deeply it felt like my skin was on fire. I hadn't really let myself think about it before and now it was the only thing I could seem to think about. At lunch.

"Yeah," I added in a hoarse voice, my tone a lot higher than I would have liked. I wasn't even sure if either of them would know what I was agreeing with. "I mean, what Eddie said is right."

Achilles saw no point in his lessons. He'd already learned from Chiron, the famed centaur who taught so many famous Greeks in his rose quartz cave. His new lessons on history felt strange, looking to his own future as the past, and English was a miserable jest. He saw some point in the mathematics training, but by far the class he most bothered attending was gym.

Selfishly so, perhaps. He could best dozens of grown men, other boys had no chance at all, but he found he quite enjoyed basketball. It was an easy challenge, but the fact that it presented challenge at all more than made up for it. He was freshly showered now, not out of breath despite handily dodging no fewer than three angry teachers, and ready to enjoy a meal that was not from the Children's Home.

Achilles sat and fastidiously began to apply the yellow and red sauces to his six assembled hot dogs.

"I thought you didn't like hot dogs," I said when I dropped into the seat beside Achilles and began to unpack my lunch. I still wasn't sure I fully understood how hot dogs were made and I thought I probably didn't want to really know, but I remembered Achilles saying the fish he caught would be better.

I guessed that wasn't really the same as not liking them, after all, but it was still funny to see him with six. It made my sandwich look rather pathetic in comparison, but I took a big bite of it anyway, then leaned my elbows on the table.

"Are you going to go to class this afternoon?" I asked. Sometimes he didn't. Sometimes I didn't want to either, but I didn't want to get into trouble and I knew it would be worse because of the fights I had gotten into.

"They are better with these brined vegetables," answered Achilles, touching his little paper cup full of pickles. And they were better than the cafeterias attempts at pizza. Achilles had only had it once, on the shore with the holy man, but where that had been transformative, here pizza was only sad, gray rectangles.

"What's this afternoon?" he asked around a huge bite, mustard squirting out at the corners of his mouth. It wasn't princely, but no one seemed to mind here. Achilles pulled a sudden face. "Is it biology?"

I reached over and took one of his pickles, popping it into my mouth along with another bite of my sandwich, then smiled at Achilles. He was the closest I had here to a friendship like the one with the boys on the Island, but it carried none of the heaviness I'd felt there. It was better, easier to be around Achilles than the boys on the Island and although I'd loved them and felt guilty for thinking it, it was so much better to have a friendship with someone who didn't need me to mother him at every turn.

That didn't mean I still wouldn't try here and there.

"Yes, it's biology," I answered. "But you ought to come. I need a partner for the frog." I had no issue with the idea of cutting a frog open to look at its inside, but I did need a partner for it. The teacher said so.

Achilles frowned. He and that particular teacher were at even greater odds than he and the others, ever since she had refused to acknowledge centaurs as a real species. Apparently it did not matter that the son of a god could vouch for one.

"What must we do with a frog?" he asked, baffled.

"Cut it open and learn about its insides," I answered. I was looking forward to it, though not because I found the idea of it fun. I just knew it was something I would likely excel at, which didn't happen often in most of my classes. I wasn't terrible in them, but I wasn't very good either, not even when I enjoyed the subject.

But I could field dress an animal. Even one as small as a frog.

"I think we have to take out its organs," I continued. "I'll be very good at it, we'll get top marks."

Achilles pulled a face. Surely they were meant to learn something, but he didn't know what he was meant to do with his knowledge of frog organs. It would thrill Patrocles, however, which was enough to sway him.

"I need those," he said. "The marks. For...whatever reason I'm meant to have them."

His own were abysmal.

"I think they're meant to get us a certificate," I said. The marking system did seem odd to me, the ways in which we were meant to demonstrate our understanding felt unfair, because there was so much pressure put on us to do well. I imagined there were people who didn't respond well to that, even if they knew the material.

"It's stupid," I admitted. "At least, I think it is most of the time. Last week I was told I would have marks taken away because I was late."

But that hadn't been my fault. The bus had taken too long.

Achilles' bronze hair and handsome face are easy to spot. Octavia grins a little as she sits down across from him and surveys his food. "Six hot dogs, huh? Quite an appetite you've got there," she remarks, her eyebrows raising slightly. "Especially considering they're school cafeteria hot dogs and can't be all that good."

As much as she loves the learning aspect of high school, she's gotten accustomed enough to the significantly higher quality food in Darrow versus back home that school food leaves more than a little something to be desired.

"I have learned the trick," said Achilles, for these hot dogs were far better than the ones served at the Home. What's more, the school provided them with so much to eat with them, red and yellow sauces, white, brined vegetables, even peppers too hot for Achilles' mild tongue.

"Grey is to be avoided, while pink is good. Green should be burned," he added with a shudder. "Somewhere too far away for the smoke to ever find you."

Octavia laughs, soft and amused. "Stay away from the green," she says with a nod. "I'll make sure to remember that. And the next hot dog I have, I'm definitely trying it your way."

She glances at the tables around them, filled with students, many of whom she doesn't know or only vaguely recognizes. There are familiar faces too, though. "I think you guys have a larger cafeteria than we do," Octavia comments. "But I guess that makes sense, since I think there are more students here."

"Do you not attend lessons here?" asked Achilles. It was true that he hadn't seen her about before today, but Achilles' own attendance was so sporadic that he rarely even saw Jamie.

If it weren't for the food, he'd not come to lessons at all. "They did not ask me my preferences at all, only said that I must go here."

"Nope," Octavia says with a shake of her head. "I go to Petros High, across town. Everyone got let out early today because of some kind of accident in one of the chemistry labs, toxic fumes from a fire. So I decided to come visit my friends here."

It doesn't seem too surprising that Achilles hasn't noticed she doesn't attend this school; she wouldn't have expected him to be looking out for her specifically. "You don't sound too excited about the whole thing," she observes neutrally. "Don't like school?"

Aggie's poking at her food more than she's really eating. The last few days have been particularly tough. School is quieter without Tim, without Nicaise, without Henry or Flavia or any number of friends she's outlasted in Darrow. Nicaise's disappearance is a tougher blow than usual and so she's put herself off to the side of the cafeteria, not quite isolated by definitely lonely.

When Jamie passes, she waves briefly at him, and watches the crowd. There are so many people who should be here.

I was on my way back from the trash when I passed Aggie again and this time I turned and went to her table, sinking down beside her. She didn't look very happy, but I didn't know her very well and I wasn't sure if it would be appropriate to say anything. Sometimes I knew just what to do and other times I didn't.

"Do you want to come sit with us?" I asked, gesturing back to where Richie was still bugging Eddie from what I could see. Maybe we weren't the coolest group to be seen with, but I didn't think Aggie much cared about that.

"You sure?" Aggie asks. She recognizes Richie and Eddie and thinks that she's made a decent impression on them both, aside from making Eddie worry he'd get salmonella from her pet snake. All things considered, it's a mild reaction.

Picking up her tray, she nods and stands up. "Thanks. I think I could use some friends right now." She manages a smile then, but it's sad.

"Of course," I said and smiled back, even though her smile was sad. "Richie skipped out on his classes this afternoon so he could come and... oh, I don't even know exactly. So he could come say lewd things to me and Eddie, I suspect."

More often than not, I found myself speechless around Richie. Especially when Eddie was present, too, because Richie seemed to think we ought to be doing all kinds of things to each other and it shocked me how easily he said certain things.

"You can sit with me any time," I told her honestly as we walked back to my table.

"Are there lewd things to say?" Aggie's not much, herself, for dating and romance but she's not ignorant. It always seems worse, too, when it's boys interested in other boys, people getting more ignorant. She'd been herself, long ago, and knowing better makes her fiercely protective.

Especially when Jamie makes that permanent offer, which makes her smile a little more fully.

Things are sad and uncertain but there are still people in her life.

"Oh," I said, having never been asked that question before. "I- I don't know. I suppose... I mean, Eddie and I... we're not just friends."

I wasn't embarrassed about that. I wasn't ashamed. I didn't try to hide it at school, I left notes in Eddie's locker and I had kissed him once between classes, a quick, stolen thing, and I didn't know if anyone had seen, but I also didn't care. We weren't the only ones, the only couple, and not the only couple in which both were boys. This one couple -- a boy and a girl -- got in trouble all the time for kissing too much in the halls. But I didn't know if there was lewd things to say about them either. Maybe all they did was kiss.

"Richie says stuff about dicks all the time," I admitted, my voice dropping to a whisper. I understood biology, but I knew very little about sex.

"Yeah, what is it with you boys and talking about that kind of stuff all the time?" Aggie asks, shaking her head. She's never known anyone who identifies as female talk as loudly or aggressively about genitalia. Several people who identify as male, too, for that matter.

"My guardians are two men and they're married to each other. So I know what not just friends means. I'm pretty hard to surprise with that kind of thing these days. And I don't judge either."

"Not us boys," I protested. "Just Richie."

Eddie and I never talked about stuff like that. We kissed and we did some other things, but mostly we didn't talk about it, because even when we had been laughing about the private party at Magnus's, we'd both been flushed a deep pink.

I shrugged a little and smiled. "I didn't think you would," I said. "Judge me, I mean. Some people do, but it seems so silly to even bother. Why would one even care?"

The rules of society had changed. I could see that easily.

"I don't know why people would care, but they do. Or else they find something else to care about for stupid reasons. Because they're stupid." And if Richie is going to be judgmental, she can sit there and be spooky.

"I don't really think about those kinds of things ever, really. I've only kissed two people–" Aggie pauses and then blushes, realizing who one of those two people were. She really hasn't thought much of that spin the bottle game at the sleepover. It had been fun and she'd been unsurprised that she was unmoved by the kisses. But, well.

"One of them was Eddie, actually. But it was just a dumb game of spin the bottle."

"Really?" I asked. Eddie hadn't told me who he had kissed and I didn't know what spin the bottle was, but suddenly I felt much less jealous. When Eddie had told me he kissed someone during a game, I had felt a strange, sad feeling in my chest, one I didn't fully understand as jealousy until a little while later, but I had also known it hadn't mattered much. That was before I was even here and Eddie had said it was just a game.

I felt like Aggie probably didn't want to steal my boyfriend.

"What's spin the bottle?" I asked to show I wasn't bothered by it. I wondered if she thought Eddie was a good kisser. I did, but I had never kissed anyone before him, not the way we did it. Sal and I had kissed, but only on the cheek, and although they had been kisses with promises of so much more, nothing had ever come of it before she died.

Aggie laughs and puts up her hands as if she's surrendering. "Really," she says. "I offered to let him kiss my pet snake, Morgana, instead but I guess he thought I was less terrifying." So far, her first and only kisses had been on that night and she thinks she can take it or leave it. The game had mostly affirmed what she already knew about herself; love might be nice, but it would take a lot to convince her into anything physical.

"It's a party game. Everyone sits in a circle and there's a bottle. When it's your turn, you spin it and kiss whoever it's pointing at when it stops." And Jamie doesn't seem mad, so she figures there's no reason not to be honest. "Eddie spun the bottle and it landed on me."

It sounded like the sort of game that could be fun, but also a game I wouldn't want to play given my own current situation. Kissing other people would be appealing if not for the fact that I only wanted to be kissing Eddie. Being his boyfriend meant he was the only one I was supposed to kiss, too, and I was perfectly happy with that arrangement.

"We never did anything like that on the Island," I said. "But then most of us were pretty young. I don't think boys care much for kissing when they're only eight years old."

I paused, then admitted, "I don't think I'd like to do it now either. I don't want to kiss anyone else."

"I don't really want to kiss anyone at all," Aggie says, her way of saying it's all right. She'd done the game on a lark and known that the kisses weren't likely to mean much to her at all and had only been confirmed in that theory. If she'd had a person she liked, she wouldn't even want to do it for a laugh.

"I realized a while ago that that stuff isn't really my thing. I like seeing my friends getting together and being happy, but I don't really want it for myself. People say that I'm weird."

"Why is that weird?" I asked, although I was mostly asking rhetorically, because I didn't expect Aggie to have an answer. I had already learned kids in Darrow declared all sorts of things weird and I fit into half of them this week. Next week I would probably fit the other half.

"I really like kissing," I said. I really liked kissing. My body decided to make me very aware of just how much I liked kissing nearly every single time I got to do it and also half the time Eddie just smiled at me the right way, which could be annoying, but that much, I knew, was completely normal.

"But I can see why someone wouldn't," I continued. "When you describe it, it sounds sort of gross, doesn't it?"

Aggie shrugs, not especially bothered. "Because most people want to have that kind of relationship. So they can't understand someone who doesn't." It's not like she doesn't love people any less; Aggie adores all of her found family and friends. She can feel love, just not that particular desire.

"I'm sure it's fun, if you like that kind of thing. When we played the game, I didn't get anything more than a little peck from Eddie or the guy I landed on after." It's not a particularly varied pool of samples, she realizes, but Aggie doesn't think she needs any to know herself.

That definitely wasn't how Eddie and I kissed. At least not all of the time. Sometimes, mostly when we were in public, I would kiss him very quickly because I didn't want a lot of people looking at us. I wasn't embarrassed, but I knew someone would probably tease us.

And it was nice, too, having something private with Eddie, something that was just ours.

"I think maybe people don't need to understand not to be rude about it," I said thoughtfully. "I don't understand why someone might want to shave off all their hair, but I don't care if they do."

"Because they're people." That's one thing she's learned from living in two centuries. There are just always going to be people who are petty and nosy, who have to know everyone's business because their own lives are simply so boring that they have to bother others. It's sort of reassuring in its annoying mundanity.

"They don't understand two boys kissing or a girl who wants a metal ring through her nose. But we still exist. So there."

When the fire alarm goes off, at first Octavia thinks it's just some stupid prank to get out of class, and she's annoyed. Apparently, though, this time it's an actual fire. Something had gone wrong in a chemistry class, and the next thing everyone knows, they're all being let out of school early as a precaution because of possible toxic fumes.

Most of the others are whooping and cheering as they're let out of class, but Octavia's disappointed. She knows it's just one day, but it's a missed day when she could be learning and pestering her teachers with all kinds of questions like she always does. Her classmates have mostly given up on trying to make fun of her for being so eager about school, because she really doesn't give a shit if they all want to waste their time, she's there to get an education - the education she never thought she'd ever have.

She's got to leave school today, though, so she heads for the library, but on her way she gets an idea. It had been the period before lunch when they all got sent home, which means Darrow HS is having lunch too. Octavia decides to do something she'd never get the chance to do otherwise, and heads to the high school across town to visit her friends.

It's not too hard to find their cafeteria, and to blend right in with all the other high school students. She looks around, trying to spot familiar faces, and trying to ignore the ache in her chest that comes when she realizes Nicaise's won't be one of them.

This whole thing is bullshit. Because of whatever weird thing goes on between Derry and Darrow, Eddie and Bev are both a whole year older than Richie. Which means he doesn't know anyone in his classes and he's just the weird kid who started the year late. The two people he actually knows in the city don't even go to his school. There's never been a time he wasn't able to pal around with Eddie or Bill or Stan during the school day, and it sucked.

Which was why he's started jumping the fence and heading over to Darrow High School for lunch, to spend that time with his friends. Even if he's already been kicked out and reported to the principal at Darrow Middle a few times already.

Today, though, he doesn't really care less, because there's pizza in the high school cafeteria, and back at his school, there are only tater tots. There's just the matter of figuring out how to persuade the lunch lady to take pity on him, when he didn't actually have any money of his own.

This seemed like a job for Toodles.

"My dear, might you take a bit of pity on a man down on his luck?" Richie asks, putting on the Voice of Toodles, the English Butler once it's his turn in line. Maybe the lunch lady will take pity on him.